Perhaps it's easier to actually make a judgment if we know what that money has gone towards.
Firstly, we know 0.5 trillion has already been paid out for the Economic Stimulus. When you look at that number, the sad fact is that we're technically bailing out the middle class almost as much as we've paid out to the poor.
Economic Stimulus Bill - Economic Stimulus Package - Obama Economic Stimulus Package
Now the causes of the financial crisis that warranted this stimulus package was a direct result of many factors. But the timeframes for those causes are a pretty telling. Most of these problems peaked during the time of the Bush administration. That administration, greedy corporations and irresponsible banking during that period was the culprit for this unavoidable, additional spending.
U.S. Housing bubble and forclosures
The national median home price ranged from 2.9 to 3.1 times median household income. This ratio rose to 4.0 in 2004, and 4.6 in 2006.
Subprime Lending
Subprime mortgages remained below 10% of all mortgage originations until 2004, when they spiked to nearly 20%.
Mortgage Underwriting
A study by analysts at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that the average difference between subprime and prime mortgage interest rates (the "subprime markup") declined significantly between 2001 and 2007. The quality of loans originated also worsened gradually during that period.
Corporate Risk-Taking and Leverage
From 2004-07, the top five U.S. investment banks each significantly increased their financial leverage (see diagram), which increased their vulnerability to a financial shock. These five institutions reported over $4.1 trillion in debt for fiscal year 2007, about 30% of USA nominal GDP for 2007.
Causes of the financial crisis of 2007?2010 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Now, we all know who is directly responsible for giving the go ahead for both the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan. Can't really argue against that. Of course, Obama is responsible for not withdrawing out of Afghanistan, so I will hold him to that, but in either case, the military costs for the first 2 years of his employment were unavoidable as the plan to go into Afghanistan (as well as the funding for the initiative) was already approved before Obama came into power.
Those costs are roughly $750 Billion dollars per year. The cost of war has been increasing significantly since 2003, which was obviously the same year we invaded Iraq.
http://www.globalissues.org/article/75/world-military-spending
So if we add up these expenditures which primarily exist because of the Bush administration, that comes out to around 2 Trillion. Which makes sense, because the remaining bit is paid out to the poor. If anything, you could truly hold Obama accountable for maintaining the war on poverty, but that is a legitimate expense. We already knew that the earlier administration was responsible for this 2 Trillion, but the existing administration is unfairly getting the flack for having to inherit their mess.
